Mindconnection eNL, 2016-05-08

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Item 1. Blowback over the stupidity level of this year's fake Presidential election is getting serious. These charades are presented as a contest between Democrats and Republicans, though both work for the same criminals.

On the R side, the clown show is so absurd that even Ann Coulter, who normally spews bile at the Dems, is spewing bile at what many now perceive to be the Retardocrat Party. On the D side of this farce, there's the liberal celebrity who responded to the question of whether she'll vote for Hillary with a flurry of statements about Hillary's total lack of integrity.

People can swallow only so much before realizing they're being had. And this year, they are realizing it in record numbers. That is very good news.

Item 2. My Congressman "done good." See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js7QfSozHuw

Item 3. Bet you thought you wouldn't see graphene mentioned here, yet again. Well, it is! Those two sentences appeared as Item 4 in our previous issue, also. Read the latest on this amazing substance here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/solar/graphene-could-help-generate-power-from-rain

Mindconnection, LLC sells in the major marketplaces. We have a Top Seller Plus rating on eBay, so in this issue we'll point you toward one of offerings there.

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An IQ test typically measures seven areas of intelligence, including your reasoning ability. The higher the IQ the more capable the person is of processing information and correctly analyzing facts. Yet there's no shortage of anecdotes about smart people doing dumb things. In many cases, you see the high IQ and it's as if the person had a much lower IQ. What is going on, here?

There is raw IQ and there is effective IQ. The raw IQ is your potential. When you take an IQ test, you focus and pay attention. You know you're being tested, so your cognitive machinery goes into full gear. In other words, you apply what you've got.

In everyday life however, most people let their brains simply idle. In some cases, they appear to shut off their brains completely. So maybe a gifted person with an IQ of 120 has an effective IQ of somewhere in the single digits. This idling of the brain is the rule, not the exception. You need to be in the exceptional group. And I'll tell you how to do it.

The "secret" is called "mindfulness." It is the opposite of the mindlessness that is normal. When you are mindful, you are fully there and in the moment.

Let's do some comparisons, to help make the concept clear.

Comparison 1

• A mindless person does things without thinking. Mindless arguing is a favorite activity among the mindless. Rather than seek to understand (by asking questions or just listening) what a more knowledgeable person is telling them, they spew back arguments. But their arguments use logical fallacies and seldom draw from any facts.
• A mindful person does things with thoughtfulness and deliberation. Mindful people rarely argue; they either know they are right and see no point in arguing or know they are wrong and see no point in arguing. They teach or they learn, but arguing isn't their thing. They usually speak from knowledge and can always apply logic.

Comparison 2

• A mindless person does things without considering why.
• A mindful person does things with intention, understanding the goal and the method for achieving it.

Comparison 3

• When confronted with an unfamiliar problem or situation, the mindless person reacts irrationally.
• When confronted with the unfamiliar, the mindful person defines the problem and solves it.

Comparison 4

• A mindless person is distracted, in a mental haze, and operating on autopilot. This person merely reacts, rather than responds. The situation controls the mindless person.
• A mindful person chooses to focus on the task or issue at hand, chooses to understand and to think clearly, and chooses to respond rather than react. The mindful person controls the situation.

How can you make sure you're in mindful mode? If you're not used to being in that mode, you'll need to develop the habit.

One way is to ask questions. For example, someone tells you that Michelle Obama is really a man. A mindless person would react by saying, "No, that's our First Lady." But a mindful person would ask, "What makes you say that? What physical features are male? What can you show me to support this?"

Or another example. You work in a factory and your boss tells you to make the production floor free of safety hazards. So you start by asking, "What are the hazards and how can I protect against them?" You might look at each item in an area and ask how it might pose a hazard.

• What if a lift truck hit that electrical transformer? Protect it with bollards.
• What if Eileen got her hand caught in that machine? Ask the maintenance department about deadman switches, guards, and other solutions.
• Could those boxes pose a tripping hazard? Build a box corral to keep the boxes from getting into the aisles.

You also might ask a question like, "When is the last time anyone had formal safety training?" Most industrial injuries are caused by unsafe acts, so teach people how to determine safe acts from unsafe acts.

Another way to develop the habit is to actively analyze your surroundings or the environment in which you are doing a task.

• You've noticed mindless drivers on the road, no doubt (they are everywhere). To be a mindful driver, continually analyze the "space bubble" around your car. Where are the other cars, and who is changing position?
• In our factory example, the DuPont safety system teaches people entering a room to Stop. Listen. Look. Smell. ...before entering.
• When walking somewhere, don't have your face stuck in a smartphone. Observe your surroundings and look for what's interesting and for what's potentially dangerous. Personally, I also like to look for what's beautiful.

As you practice mindfulness, you will find that you stay mindful and don't have to work at getting into the mindful state. Once mindfulness "gets rolling," by its nature it is self-sustaining. Only willful laziness or deliberately entering a state of mindlessness will shut it off. This alone is a very good reason to avoid television.

An exception to this is my aforementioned Congressman (see Good News items), who is on the Appropriations Committee and who has vehemently argued against and voted against every suggested budget increase for these criminals.

The IRS is beyond reform, and so is the 1040. Why are these obvious facts? After more than 100 years of tinkering with the 1040 system and passing various laws to reduce IRS abuse, CONgress admits this system is still a long way from being right. When Einstein stated his famous definition of insanity, he wasn't thinking of a time span anywhere near this long. What does this extended insanity tell us about the mental state of those "serving" in CONgress?

It is clear that "reform" is a red herring at best. The solution is to abolish the IRS. When told this obvious fact, members of CONgress retort with, "But who is going to administer our tax system?" That's a totally idiotic question, because the IRS does not administer our tax system. The IRS mis-administers the 1040 system (and now the Obamacare tax, which illegally originated in the Senate), which is only one of the many federal taxes.

The 1040 does not "fund the government

Let's take a look at the 1040 for a moment, shall we? The latest figures show that IRS collects about $2.4 trillion per year. But the 1040 tax is only one of many federal taxes. We already pay several flat taxes (look at your paystub) on our income in addition to the 1040 tax. Odds are that you paid more in SS tax than in 1040 tax last year (be sure to include your employer's portion because money does not grow on trees and their portion simply comes out of what they would otherwise pay you).

And the federal government collects various fees over and above taxes; it's not clear if these are included in the IRS total.

The Department of the Treasury released figures stating the total revenue from all federal taxes was about $1 trillion more than the 1040 amount in 2015. That's an understated figure. More on that in a moment.

It appears the 1040 accounts for about 2/3 of federal revenue. But appearances can be deceiving and in this case they are. Treasury does not, for example, count the tax that comes in the form of inflation. Contrary to the propaganda, inflation doesn't mysteriously happen. It is caused by one thing and one thing only: the Federal Reserve inflates the supply of money, thus debauching the currency. This results in a taking of wealth from all dollar holders, even those in other countries. China has recently responded to this stealing in a very strong way with their new policy on the Yuan.

How big is the inflation tax? Note that between 2008 and 2012, the Federal Reserve created $49 trillion that it subsequently handed out to the largest banks. And that's only part of the total counterfeiting done to debauch the currency and thus stealthily tax us.

The Treasury, which is culpable in this scheme, does not report this tax. This leaves us to wonder how many other taxes aren't included in the official figures. We have no idea what the total federal tax bite is and will probably never know, but we can be certain that the vast majority of federal revenue comes from taxes other than what the IRS mishandles.

Cost versus benefits

A fact that CONgress routinely ignores is that the cost of getting federal revenue ala the IRS greatly exceeds the amount of that revenue. That is, the IRS costs far more than it brings in. Simply abolishing the IRS and the 1040 system will increase federal revenue dramatically. Without adding yet another tax scheme.

How can this be? Take a look at some of the costs, below. Add these up and you can see they must have a chilling effect on the economy because they dramatically impair commerce and thus reduce the size of the non-1040 sources of federal taxes.

Do a little math, and you see the real costs of this system exceed $4 trillion per year in money that, if invested into the economy, would be multiplied many times over. How many times over is an interesting question, and if you work out the answer you see these costs are taking nearly all the "seed money" out of the economy.

Nearly all of the capital needed for growth is being burned instead of used for growth. That is why only 48% of working age American adults have jobs (according to a 2015 report from CONgress). That is, our true unemployment figure is 52% rather than the 6% or whatever lie the feds are telling today. Abolish the 1040, and the picture changes dramatically. So dramatically that federal receipts without the 1040 would exceed federal receipts with the 1040. And not by just a little.

Some of the costs:

• Compliance costs, as normally published. These are generally touted at being between 7 and 12 times the amount raised, depending on the source. Typically, the figure is arrived at by figuring the lost wage hours wasted in filling out IRS forms and calculating taxes. Thus the figure is a gross understatement of the actual compliance costs. According to a 2016 report released by the NTU, "Based on the most current public estimates, taxpayers spent 6.1 billion hours complying with the Tax Code. The total compliance cost amounts to over $234 billion, based on the average salary and benefits to U.S. private sector workers and the out of pocket expenses for tax preparation and software." Now, that is a staggering figure in itself. But it is only part of the true compliance costs.
   
• The other pre-assault compliance costs. Take a guess at how many lawyers and accountants work in corporate tax departments. It's not a small number. These are highly paid people, plus the company provides office space that is not cheap (plus all the related amenities). Not only are companies paying all of these people and thus decreasing their own profit, but they aren't paying that same amount in salaries, office space, etc., to get productive work done. That money does not go into R&D, product development, marketing, customer service, or anything else that makes a business stronger and more able to provide jobs.
   
• The tax preparation industry. Now, this is not a bad industry. But it is all overhead to the nation's economy. The cost of this industry, which diverts bright people (and their education, training, and certification choice) from a productive occupational choice to one that is all overhead, is huge. It's never included in the compliance cost figures. How many billions of dollars do you think this might be?
   
• Tax Court kangaroo game costs (post assault compliance costs). The total figures are not available to my knowledge, but I can make an educated estimate. In several cases I reviewed, it cost between $1 million and $3 million to go through the Tax Court nonsense so that you can get the case actually heard in a real court where you have some rights as the accused but your case is already compromised due to Tax Court rulings.
  
  How many cases does this fake court pretend to adjudicate every year? Maybe 500? So 500 times 2 million dollars is how much? What if the number of cases is 15,000? Does that sound reasonable? That is, in fact, how many cases this fake court pretends to adjudicate annually. Now we are talking some serious money on the part of 15,000 defendants who are probably innocent. All of it is overhead, taken from productive use. Tens of billions of dollars wasted. Every year.
  
  Since the GAO found that 94% of IRS notices are erroneous, common sense tells us that most of these cases are bogus to begin with.
   
• Employer destruction costs. In an all-out IRS assault on an employer, company assets are seized and all employees lose their jobs. That's before the IRS has actually makes any sort of case against the company. There are many documented instances where the destroyed company was later proven innocent. None of the jobless workers are contributing to the economy and those lost jobs won't come back. Ever.
   
• Terrorist defense costs. Let's not pretend people aren't absolutely terrified of the IRS. They are, and for good reason. When IRS decides to destroy individuals, it gets far nastier than just destroying jobs. After taking everything the victim owns, the IRS systematically isolates the person from all sources of income and social support. The torture may take a few years, during which time the victim is borrowing to spend money on a doomed legal defense. In the Hoyt Fiasco, IRS targeted individuals who then had no options left but to die of starvation while homeless and cold--or just off themselves to end the misery.
   
• IRS system costs. Take a look at the employment figures. IRS has an army, and it's not cheap to fund that army. IRS also has fortresses all over the country. The reinforced bunker in Kansas City could stop a tank assault. The IRS top executives (gang leaders) know they are bad people doing bad things that are immoral and illegal, so out of fear that their victims will make a well-justified counter-assault they have erected these fortresses at our expense.

These are only some of the many costs of having the 1040 system. I did not, for example, include the costs of ongoing stress from IRS problems and the resulting medical costs (all economic overhead). Also in the tens of billions of dollars per year.

Nor did I discuss sleep impairment costs. According to the Sleep Institute, a person who is 25% sleep deprived has the mental acuity of someone who is legally drunk. How many people have one sleepless night after another worrying about their 1040 taxes or, especially, after getting a "love letter" from the IRS? It's a big number. It takes just one of these people to be in a key position in a company to cost that company hundreds of jobs.

These costs are basically capital that would otherwise be put to productive use to grow the economy, provide jobs (remember, only 48% of working age American adults have jobs, so -- again -- our real unemployment figure is 52% not the paltry single-digit lie you hear touted so often).

How much capital are we talking about? If I tossed out a number like $10 trillion, it could probably be substantiated with enough research. Think about it. Then think about an economy with an extra $10 trillion in capital to work with. How much would that alleged 1/3 source of federal revenue pull in then? Would it be multiples of what IRS collects? Probably.

Any cost benefit analysis must, by definition, look at the costs. Our CONgress has apparently never done that, unless the real reason for the 1040 system is something other than providing revenue to the Treasury. Since the 1040 system actually decreases revenue to the Treasury, and by a significant amount, we need to ask what the real reason for the 1040 system is. Considering the grossly immoral behavior of the IRS, we have a pretty good idea of what that reason is. And it's not a reason that fits within our concept of a civilized society.

Your tip? Understand the reality here, and communicate that to your two senators and your Congressperson.

• Doubling of the national debt.
• Doubling of the number of Americans on food stamps.
• Doubling of the number of Americans on permanent disability relief.
• Millions of full-time jobs eliminated due to the cost of the Unaffordable Care Act.
• As of 2014, the number of working age Americans with jobs stood at 48%. That means 52% of Americans do not have jobs. What do you call a person without a job? Unemployed. Our real unemployment rate is 52%.

These are the kinds of outcomes that even doomsday predictors hesitate to predict. Yet here we are. When a nation is in this kind of financial disaster, people who are hungry and desperate resort to predatory tactics. The rise in the "scam business" has been predictably spectacular.

Of particular appeal are scams that promise to lift struggling people to prosperity. Multi-level marketing pitches are noted for playing on this factor. Dirtbags like Riccardo Ferrari pitch pathetically lame "get rich" schemes that fool almost nobody because of how poorly they are presented. But that particular dirtbag does snag enough desperate people to take their last dime. This is a guy who sold lifetime dance lessons to very elderly people with early stage dementia.

As you are probably aware, Mindconnection, LLC sells on Amazon and eBay (among other marketplaces). This is not an easy game to play. Most wannabe Internet merchants lose money rather than get rich (or even make a decent living). There are many hidden fees, plus you need to have a fairly large skillset to be able to understand the data and take appropriate actions.

In any business, you need connections and capital to succeed. With online selling, you need good relations with reputable distributors and/or manufacturers plus you need to be able to buy inventory in a quantity that is sufficient. What's sufficient depends upon the inventory turnover rate and many other factors. Just getting this right is a big challenge, and most online sellers get it tragically wrong.

You also have to handle losses on damaged returns, be able to make dissatisfied customers feel like they were treated wonderfully, and take care of a zillion details.

Where am I going with this? I was recently made aware of a new scam that promises a risk-free way of getting rich on eBay and Amazon. For merely $27,000 (ouch!) they will provide you with software (that is worth only a fraction of that) and coach you.

They don't define "coach," but do provide plenty of empty promises. They don't provide connections and they don't provide capital (they take $27,000). Basically, they don't do jacksh** for you except charge you several hundred times the cost of same software you can get from any number of vendors and waste three days of your time filling your head with wrong ideas and disinformation.

Now, get this. They say the secret is to find things on sale at Target, Wal-Mart, etc., and resell them on these marketplaces. They also say a price point of around $59 works super great because that's where you'll get your sales volume. Stop. Think. How many $59 items can you jam into your car? And you're going to take all this stuff home and repack it and then ship it to Amazon? The math just does not work. Also, why do stores significantly mark down items? Because those items don't sell and the stores want to get rid of that stale inventory!

So you're going to pick up a $59 item for, what, $40. You buy 20 of these, making two round-trips to the store. And of course, this is really fun during a thunderstorm or when it's been snowing.

Now you've got $800 of stuff that nobody wants. If you're really, really lucky you can unload it on eBay for about half of what you paid for it. Way to go, Ace.

A "business opportunity" model is a scam if its promoters:

• Call it a "system."
• Say it can't fail. Any business can fail, and most do. 80% of new businesses fail within the first year.
• Suggest that it's easy. Making money requires working hard.
• Tell you it's simple. There's no simple way to run a business. Promoters say it's simple because they want to attract simpletons (who are easier to rip off).
• Use words like "secret" or "elite." If they had a secret to getting rich, why would they need to sell that to people who can't keep it secret?
• Use phrases like "inner circle" or "exclusive." Yeah, right. They hold a seminar for thirty people who are strangers to each other and to them, and all the people who "get in on the ground floor" will be doing the same thing. How exclusive is that?
• Talk about how much money you'll make rather than about the basic requirements for running whatever "business opportunity" they are pitching.
• Fail to talk about what kind of person (other than "motivated", I mean mindset and skill set) it takes to succeed in this particular business niche.
• Fail to clearly establish what the niche is. In the eBay/Amazon scam, the promoters totally ignore the need for a seller to offer only products in similar categories. For example, suppose the seller sells car audio amplifiers. You click on their store and see baby diapers, dog food, and cheap jewelry; would you buy an amp from them? No way!

If any one of those bullets rings true, collect evidence and then quietly make your way to the exit. File a police report so that your local PD can route the complaint to federal authorities and, if possible, take their own actions to shut down the circus. If the circus is conducted in a way other than "people in the same room" (e.g., via Webinar), shutting it down will take longer.

But if it's conducted in person in your city, your local police should be able to peruse your evidence (you did bring the promo literature and other evidence, right?) and have more than ample cause to raid the circus and arrest those promoters.

A reader wrote in with this question:

"I'm very concerned about my heart. So I've gone on a fat-free diet and bought a treadmill. Is there anything else you recommend?"

Wow. Take a look at my veins in that picture. Does it look like I have any vascular problems? So let's address the lies told to people who really have good intentions.

An ultra low-fat diet (sometimes called a fat-free diet) typically replaces healthy fats with unhealthy grains. If you want to have cardiovascular illness just give up organic butter, organic eggs, cooking oils, avocadoes, and other sources of healthy fats. One of the fats you need to consume is, contrary to the propaganda, cholesterol. This molecule does not survive its trip through your digestive system, but is broken down into the precursors of hormones that are required for a healthy vascular system.

Eating fat doesn't make you fat. Nor is this macro-nutrient somehow evil.

Now let's address the exercise question. Let me start off by saying that I peg the spirometer when taking that particular test so I have fantastic lung capacity in addition to the great vascular system.

Treadmills are boring, and usually they are used for low-intensity exercise. This does almost nothing for cardiovascular development, because there's no real strain placed on your system. So there's no adaptive response.

If running is your thing, then forget about the treadmill. Run as fast as you can up a few flights of stairs or tackle a steep hill at top speed. Back in the heyday of my Kung Fu training, we would run bleachers. The idea here is to make a short burst of high demand. That's what makes your heart stronger and your lungs to get bigger and more efficient.

Another issue that comes up in regard to heart health is people want to reduce their body fat percentage. Typically, they mis-state this as "losing weight" but let's use the correct wording. Among other bad advice is to "eat more protein." So they buy a big tub of whey protein powder and just eat a couple shakes of that a day on top of their normal diet. All this does is make them fatter. Typically, they will eat more to "correct" the problem.

The origin of this advice is the idea that if you substitute more protein for some of your carbs, you will get leaner. Just eating more protein won't do the same thing. This idea has some merit, but it's a one size fits all that doesn't stop to ask the question, "What am I eating now?" If your macronutrients work out to 20% fat, 20% protein, and 60% carbs then, yes, you need to change the mix.

I'm not saying protein powders are bad. I'm just commenting on the misuse of them. I don't track percentages of macronutrients in my own diet. If I feel low on energy, I consume more carbs (e.g., have an apple). If my workout recovery seems lagging, I increase my intake of supplemental aminos and/or protein. Other than that, I just stick to a nutrient-dense diet.

Don't fall for the hype or propaganda that some magic mix of macronutrients or some boring exercise will give you the beautiful body you want. Sound nutrition and hard, intense exercise will. You can get a "big and ripped" look through toxic drugs, but you won't have a healthy body. Eat healthy and train hard to be (and look) healthy.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

A full bladder is roughly the size of a soft ball. To keep it healthy, fill it up and drain it often. How many softballs' worth of water do you drink throughout the day?

Are you fully awake, embracing life? Or do you go through the day on autopilot like most people do?